Are there any voices left in Westminster to speak up for farming? - Sarah Todd

It’s hard not to conclude that farming folk are feeling politically homeless. What with the revolving door at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) - ten different holders of the top job since 2010 - there is no wonder many feel the Conservatives haven’t backed British farming. Not only agriculture, but also wider rural communities. Long-standing country dwellers have experienced a bigger change in their traditional way of life than perhaps any other sector of society.

Their children and grandchildren are unlikely to be able to buy homes in the villages they grew up in and with the rise in holiday cottage and second home conversions they increasingly find themselves living next door to a shifting, non-rural population. Outsiders in their own communities.

Many would doubtless enjoy a pint in the village pub - if they still have one - with charismatic Reform leader Nigel Farage. But his old wax jacket aside, does he have a clue about the countryside?

For those longer in the tooth it is hard to trust Labour. There is the chip on the shoulder so many of its number seem to have about anybody who owns more than a postage stamp of lawn, but also serious questions about right to roam, bovine TB, inheritance tax and much more.

What the Liberal Democrats have is their former leader Tim Farron, who has sometimes felt like the only person speaking up for farmers in the commons. Farmers in his Lake District constituency must be among the luckiest in the country to have had him scrapping like a Lakeland terrier on their behalf over the years. But what about the rest of them? Are they more bothered about legalising cannabis than conventional crops?

Actual proper farmers are becoming extinct. Move-to-the-country types rearing a few rare breed animals with the marketing nous to get their products on the shelves of upmarket farm shops are thriving. Just look around at agricultural shows, the number of traditional local farming families still exhibiting their animals is on the decline. There are many more who are new brooms, paying top dollar for a handful of animals to trophy hunt with.

Does it matter? Well, good luck to all. But if push came to shove and this country needed to produce serious amounts of food Hugo and Arabella who have moved up from London will have a big job on with their three Large White sows, five Belted Galloways and vegetable plot.

Just like other industries that have been reduced to nowt, such as shipbuilding, coal, textiles, and steel, ‘proper’ farmers could end up being something children learn about in history lessons.

Again, does it matter if all we have left is humongous foreign or city-financed farming companies - incorporating thousands of acres that would have supported many individual farms - or hobby farmers supplying the odd handful of kale and a few scrummy free-range eggs?

Sometimes, as a farming correspondent, it would be easier to not care. To turn up, notebook in hand, and pretend to be impressed when farm managers tell you how much money they are making for their shareholders via environmental schemes (planting trees and suchlike).

Good quality British-produced food should be accessible and affordable for all. Idiots have allowed chicken from Thailand to be cheaper than those reared and slaughtered on our own shores. That is a national disgrace, along with lamb from New Zealand and pork products from Denmark and the Netherlands.

Rose-tinted spectacles, for the farming life of this correspondent’s 1970s childhood, must be set to one side. It’s no good to man nor beast for the countryside to be wrapped in cotton wool and treated like a museum.

It is so sad - as we approach what may well be the most important election in a generation for British food and farming - that the countryside has suffered the huge blow of being minus our King, who, as Prince Charles, was able to be farming’s biggest champion. In a double whammy, we’re also without Minette Batters, who stepped down after tireless work as president of the National Farmers’ Union earlier this year.

What is farming left with? Not much apart from Jeremy Clarkson. His Clarkson’s Farm has balanced the boyish banter of shows like Top Gear and Grand Tour with some of the realities and frustrations of farming. It’s added to the authenticity that he hasn’t pretended to know about farming and be anything else than Jeremy (jog on Hugo and Arabella) from the world of television and media who has made enough cash to buy up 1,000 acres of farmland. In many ways, he lets the real stars of the show be his team. Kaleb, Gerald and Charlie are all familiar characters to those who properly farm for a living

Yes, he is also a wax jacket wearing former private school boy who doesn’t seem to care about upsetting the politically correct. Thinking aloud, that sounds rather like Mr Farage…

Sarah Todd is a journalist specialising in farming and country life. Read her regular column in Wednesday’s edition of The Yorkshire Post.